On July 12, Amazon is once again holding its “Biggest Amazon Event Ever”: Prime Day, a day full of thousands of lightning deals exclusively for new and existing Prime members. Amazon promises to post deals rapidly and frequently, and we’ll be posting the best ones on our Wirecutter and Sweethome Deals page and Twitter accounts (@wirecutterdeals and @sweethomedeals). We’re applying the same maniacal level of deal scanning we do all year long to pick out the deals that are actually worth taking advantage of. During 2015’s Prime Day, our team scanned a total of 3,228 deals and found 35 worth posting. While most people don’t have the time to sort through thousands of questionable deals all day, last year we managed to find some great ones, and that’s our mission again this time around.

Want a sneak peek at what we’re working on?

A weekly roundup of new guides, picks, and a preview of what’s to come.

As usual, we won’t be telling you about every single deal that comes down the pike, because most deals are lousy. We will tell you about the ones that are genuinely worth grabbing. Be sure to follow the action on our Twitter handles if you want to stay on top of the good stuff during Prime Day, because lightning deals don’t last forever and can sell out quick.

More about our favorite deals

As the Wirecutter and Sweethome teams have learned after scanning hundreds of thousands of deals (yes, literally) over the past few years, not all deals are as they seem. In fact, most are not worth jumping on and tend to mislead shoppers. To separate the signal from the noise, our team of deal experts, alongside Wirecutter and Sweethome editors, will be taking shifts and spending our Prime Day watching the lightning deals as they come up, ferreting out the best ones to pass along to our readers.

You’ve probably noticed that we often link to Amazon when making recommendations in our guides. As editors, we’ve used Amazon’s Prime service for many years—since long before The Wirecutter existed. We think the convenience of Prime’s two-day shipping combined with Amazon’s customer service makes it the most trusted way to shop online for most people.

What is a lightning deal?

Lightning deals happen on Amazon every day, and they’re the bulk of the deals on Prime Day. They can offer significant discounts on a specific item, and each deal lasts for a set amount of time (usually a few hours) or once stock on that item runs out, whichever happens first. Once you claim a deal, you have a certain amount of time to purchase before your claim expires.

If a deal is sold out, you should join the waitlist (if it isn’t already full), because you might have another chance to claim the deal if another buyer’s claim times out. The good: Lightning deals can offer deep, deep discounts you wouldn’t otherwise see. The bad: They tend to include a lot of crap, while the better lightning deals get snatched up within minutes. During Prime Day specifically, most of the best deals sell out in seconds.

Is this worth signing up for Amazon Prime?

Amazon Prime, which typically costs about $100 per year, allows you to take advantage of the free two-day shipping available on many items. If you place roughly 15 to 20 orders on Amazon within a year and upgrade to the two-day shipping, the cost of the membership begins to balance out. It tips in your favor even more if you share your Prime membership with up to two other members of your household, because they can take advantage of the shipping benefit without having to pay a separate annual fee. If you are considering the total cost and benefit of possibly joining Amazon Prime, remember that to sweeten the deal Amazon also throws in streaming movies and television (its version of Netflix) as well as streaming music and a lending library for Kindle owners.

If you’re eager to check out Prime for Prime Day (and beyond), you can sign up for a 30-day trial to give it a spin before committing your money. Other ways to get Prime include a six-month free trial plus 50 percent off for students with a .edu email address. Up to two people in one household can share Prime.

We help support the hundreds of hours that go into our evaluations through affiliate commissions on purchases made through our links. We’re committed to publishing unbiased guides that clearly detail our decision-making criteria to our readers, but we just want you to know.

Here's how to support our writers and our work. For more on our ethics, ideas and how we work, read this. We obtain the products we review through a mixture of buying our own and working with companies to borrow review units. Our policy is to return or donate products after we’re finished working with them.

Find an error?: Also, If you notice a guide that needs a little freshening up, or has errors, please tweet us at @wirecutter or email us at notes@thewirecutter.com and we'll fix it. Thank you.